Author: Alberto Cossu – 05/03/2024
Sea and New Projections of Power
Alberto Cossu
A recent issue of the journal “Geopolitica” (volume 2, 2023, eds Tiberio Graziani, Gino Lanzara) delves into the critical relationship between land and sea in geopolitics. It centers on Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), which establish a coastal state’s sovereignty over a defined maritime area. The volume examines how EEZs influence a nation’s ability to project power on the global stage. Additionally, it explores the concept of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as engines of economic growth. SEZs are designated areas within a country that offer relaxed regulations and tax breaks to attract foreign investment. The volume highlights how SEZs can not only stimulate domestic economic development but also act as a springboard for a country’s external influence by facilitating connections to international supply chains and trade.
Bordonero’s opening article frames the theoretical debate on the relationship between maritime and land power, providing the conceptual tools needed to interpret the subsequent articles.
The author, who examines a vast Anglo-Saxon literature on the subject, argues that maritime power remains of crucial importance in the contemporary international context, on the military, commercial and diplomatic levels. However, it seems destined to be variously combined with land power.
The key question for any maritime power is how to translate its control of the sea into political influence on land. Maritime powers have a strong interest in preventing improvements in the exploitation of land routes that could unify a continental power and shift trade away from the sea.
The development of gas pipelines, railways and highways across Eurasia in recent decades, seen from a maritime perspective, are attempts to gradually become independent of the influence of maritime power and significantly reduce its hold on the continent.
The international literature concludes that there are other factors that can alter the balance in favor of one or the other power, for example technological innovations that are increasingly having a growing weight.
Therefore, the key to global geopolitical predominance lies not only in the domination of the sea or, conversely, of the continental mass, but in having technological advantages over rivals, or in possessing a diplomatic-strategic apparatus capable of co-opting allies and building structured and lasting relationships.
It could be added that it also depends on soft powers such as, for example, the strategic-organizational capacities of a country in relation to the management of different hard and soft resources.
Simple maritime supremacy does not necessarily lead to hegemony over rivals, whether they be maritime or land powers.
Furthermore, as George Friedman states in a 2019 article on Geopolitical Futures, the command of the sea is shifting from air to space, after having passed from sea to air.
These days, the announcement that the Russian Federation would be able to attack Western satellite systems has brought the problem into sharp focus.
In this context, Fabio Mini, in his article entitled “Continents and Peripheries at War,” invites us to keep in mind that geopolitical theories that praise the sea have never been convincing, just as those that refer to the “continental heartland” as the seat of global power are not convincing: this metaphor has lost much of its original geographical meaning. The geographical and political centers are no longer necessarily coincident, and the “position” in the world depends on the network of connections and its many “nodes.”
Mori’s words somehow collide, making the debate on the Focus of the volume lively, with the position of another author, Kelly, who instead supports the theory that the US is the true heartland (How Rimlands and Sea Power Connect. North American Security to Achieving a Favorable Eurasian Balance of Power). Mini argues in this regard that Kelly’s theory is not very convincing and that the parameters for this change in polarity are based on geographical observations, considered absolute dominants of geopolitics, on exclusively geographical spaces, on paradoxically ideological assumptions (geopolitics is a-ideological while balances and power struggles are fruits of the realism of the “conservatives”) and on real semantic manipulations.
Among the latter, the most obvious is the American militarization of the oceans, which would have the function of preserving the heart of the American continent from the chaotic shattered peripheries of the Eurasian one rather than the other way around: the militarization of the oceans is in fact – Mini argues – the militarization of the coastal areas of others and the main cause of their “fragmentation” and instability.
Mini focuses on the strategic concept of NATO launched in 2022 in the midst of the Ukrainian war, which commits NATO members to building a global conventional deterrent. This gives rise to the idea of an infinite Mediterranean, to which Lanzara (The Mediterranean: From Sea of Civilizations to Unlimited Space) clings, describing it as an unlimited space.
The Mediterranean, for Italy’s high-profile shipbuilding and armaments industry, feels restrictive. It’s a crowded sea, rife with conflict, and offers limited opportunities compared to vaster markets. The abundance of natural harbors, while strategically valuable, creates a complex operating environment.
The volume is particularly rich in articles, so much so that the space we have available does not allow us to present them to the reader in their entirety. Therefore, we will cite those that somehow characterize the focus of the issue.
The article by Fabio Caffio (The Italian EEZ: geopolitical ambitions and regulatory shortcomings), an expert in maritime law, highlights the shortcomings of Italian legislation regarding the EEZ, but above all emphasizes how Italy is, on the sea, a nation reluctant to assert its legitimate rights, both for a tendency to compromise and for a congenital lack of maritime vocation.
The situation of the EEZs of the Eastern Mediterranean – in which Greece and Turkey are particularly active – represents an example of particular criticality due to the presence of large energy resources. Italy seems to have renounced asserting its national interests. A scenario of fragmentation is therefore emerging, such as to lead some analysts to speak of “Mediterraneans”. In this sense, there is a lack of coordination of the policies of the states bordering the basin and the absence of a mechanism such as the Barcelona Process or the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (1995), conceived by the European Union with French leadership, capable of composing the growing fragmentation.
The author also highlights the regulatory vacuum that characterizes matters that have now become sensitive for national security, such as the protection of underwater infrastructures of the EEZ such as cables, pipelines and artificial installations, as well as scientific research, urging the need for the legislator to intervene to issue specific regulations.
The author sharply criticizes Italy’s management of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). They argue that a lack of clear vision and foresight has resulted in a hazy and uncertain legal framework. This ambiguity stems from an overreliance on convoluted regulations, necessitating constant and laborious interpretation.
The case of the Chinese Greater Bay Area presented by Danela Caruso (The Chinese Greater Bay Area and the Green Transition. An Idea of Hypercity as a Sustainable Model) is of particular interest because it represents in some way the evolution of a “special economic zone” that specializes in sustainability by integrating a vast territorial area called Hypercity into a unitary governance. This is able to catalyze the interest of investors who intend to operate in a sustainable, digital, technologically advanced and integrated ecosystem. In this sense, it allows China a considerable external projection of power.
The Hypercity includes Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, which is one of the world’s leading financial centers, Macao and a hinterland of various industrial cities. The area in question covers approximately 56,000 square kilometers with a population of over 86 million and a GDP of $1,668.8 billion in 2020, representing 6% of the population of the entire country and 11% of its total GDP.
As the author states, the project represents a significant contribution to the development of the global economy and should be placed within the framework of a program that sees China gradually asserting itself as a global technological model.
The opening of the GBA will not only strengthen the integration and development of the areas involved, but will also improve the region’s overall capacity to attract resources for innovation by strengthening cooperation focusing on finance and the use of technology to improve regulatory coordination and interconnectivity.
In short, the Hypercity, by recomposing a coastal strip, represents an example of how territories can become competitive not only by integrating but also by equipping themselves with cutting-edge technological infrastructures and respecting sustainability. This allows the country that hosts it, in this case China, to play a role as a global player.
The case of the Makran/Baluchestan coastal strip (Terra incognita no more? The Makran/Baluechestan coastal strip between dynamics of influence and security issues) as described by Gianluca Pastori could be counted among the problematic ones that have not yet produced a stable political-economic development line and is rather a territory of conflicts between different groups.
Makran, the coastal region of Pakistani Balochistan, is a crucial transit corridor linking the western Indian Ocean to the Asian hinterland. Traditionally a poor and marginal area, marked by deep political instability, its importance has grown steadily over the years. Since the late 2000s, massive investments have benefited the region, especially in the context of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.
The Gwadar seaport, near the Pakistani-Iranian border, and the Makran coastal highway between Gwadar and Karachi are the two main symbols of Beijing’s political and economic commitment to the region. However, despite their economic and infrastructural impact, Makran’s problems remain intact. Yet the area is a strategic point for Beijing as it is connected by rail to China and would allow it to create an alternative corridor to the Strait of Malacca, which is a vital choke point for Chinese maritime transit controlled by India.
Finally, the article on the Arctic by Marco Dordoni (Geopolitics of the Arctic or Geopolitics of the Arctic) highlights a threat to Mediterranean traffic, whose centrality could be undermined if the Arctic Sea routes are made fully operational. However, as several studies recall, including that of the SRM, considerable progress still needs to be made to see an operational functionality of an Arctic line capable of jeopardizing the Mediterranean one.
In conclusion, the issue of Geopolitica highlights how the emergence of new technologies, including dual-use technologies, digital networks based on submarine cable infrastructures, space telecommunications and sustainability, are increasingly integrating with the maritime and terrestrial domain, as in the case of the Chinese Hypercity. Therefore, a modern state cannot neglect these new factors of power if it intends to assert itself in the global strategic and economic competition.
The volume and the numerous articles it contains make us understand how new dimensions of power must be integrated with the traditional ones of the terrestrial and maritime domain.